


Sun

by CanonicalMomentum



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, NaNoWriMo 2016, with a fair bit of sunless sea flavour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8495656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanonicalMomentum/pseuds/CanonicalMomentum
Summary: Two gay girls and three gay ghosts delve to the bottom layer of a City that has built itself towards the Sun for thousands of years.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A project for NaNoWriMo 2016. Mirror: http://canowrimomentum.tumblr.com/

When you go down to the tunnels, it's sensible to bring some ghosts.

You'll be OK if you're just going one or two levels down, really. Somewhere with architecture you can recognise. The light of the living will still be leaking out of those stones, and the ghosts won't go there.

But today, I'm not going to stop after one or two layers. Today I'm going down, all the way down, to the very bottom of the tunnels. And I don't intend to come back.

So I have some ghosts with me.

Nanna's ghost I have in a small glass bottle, which apparently used to contain vinegar. She's sleeping right now. I am told she slept a lot when she was alive and she's kept up the habit as a ghost. But I know when I need her, Nanna will be there.

My sister's ghost I have in the glass eye of a toy flamingo. She loved that flamingo, and she was delighted when I put her ghost in it. It was a fiddly trick - I was scared I'd lose her - but I'm glad I did it. My sister is cheerfully chattering away about the other ghosts floating through me. I smile and nod, keeping an eye on the ground ahead. Even on the third level, the floor is rotten and can give way at any moment.

I do not have other ghosts.

A well-prepared traveller would have many more ghosts. Friends and family and lovers, for some. Others might have colleagues in the Work - there's no need for death to terminate your contract. The unscruplous will buy the ghosts of poor people who promised their ghost to an agency before they died. (Of course, it's illegal to bind a ghost forever. But there's no limit on the number of years of afterlife you can sell, if you're desperate. Most of us are desperate, so years are cheap.)

Even this far underground, the sounds of building work above me haven't stopped. Work crews will be carefully testing the structural integrity of the City, working out where they can build higher, fighting against time to keep the rooftops in the light of the sun. They said the city would sink through the soupy clouds for ten years. Then, a hundred. Two, three, four, five hundred years were predicted before the city would rest on solid stone and the Workers could down their tools.

Well, now they don't care to guess. Perhaps the City will sink forever. But we're making it work, right? If we have to build the City forever, we can and we will. Is stone not plentiful, in the sky?

Ahead of me is a doorway. The door has been removed - there are rusty marks on the walls where its hinges used to hang. Through the door, a light.

I hesitate, creeping up to the door. I take the flamingo with my sister in it, and poke its head round the corner for a moment.

"Just a Work crew!" my sister says.

I sigh. Of all the things that could be making a light down here, this is definitely the most benign. I stand up, and walk with false confidence out the door.

The crew's Fore glances up, a tall woman in dusty overalls with short curly hair, her face streaked with mud. "Who's there? Come on out, and be quick about it!" she calls to me, holding up her lantern to shine towards me. I can hardly see her through the glare.

I walk forward, empty hands raised (my sister's flamingo hanging on my belt). The Fore lets out a relieved breath, and takes her hand off her pistol. "All right, back to work, you lot! Just some kid going scavvies."

I smile as charmingly as I can manage. "Thanks, miss!" I say, hoping it doesn't come across as too forced. If they knew my actual purpose, the Workers might not be so forgiving.

"This area's off-limits." the Fore says, frowning. "But perhaps..." she taps one side of her goggles, and I realise one of her eyes is blind, "I might not be looking out with my good eye?"

I sigh and pass her the scrap of money I'd taken just in case I needed to bribe someone down here. Probably for the best to use it now - I doubt anyone in the lower levels will care much for Surface currency. If they can even touch it.

"A pleasure." the Fore says. "Well, kid, you be careful out there. Get back before dark, eh?"

"I know my way around!" I say, with false indignance.

The Fore chuckles. "Of course you do." With that, she ignores me, returning to her work. The crew seems to be dismantling something resembling a pipe organ - something I had, in fact, assumed was exactly that in my previous visits. No doubt it's really an Engine of terrifying power in the right hands. No doubt vital for the Work up above. I make sure not to be caught looking too closely.

There's a courtyard up ahead, its fountain long since run dry. This bit is familiar enough - so, too is the chamber directly below the fountain. I step out into the dark courtyard, allowing my sister to be my eyes as my own adjust from the Workers' bright lights to my own soft red lamp.

"There's this great big ghost with really long legs!" my sister says, excitedly. "It's jumping up and down like a frog! And all its intestines are flopping up and down."

"Is it going to bother me?" I say, wishing I had the ghost-sight. Perhaps with enough time below ground...

"No, I don't think so!" my sister says brightly. "It seems very busy uh... jumping."

"Great."

A big, harmless ghost is good news. Small ghosts tend to stay away from the big ones - unless they're dying a second death. A big ghost has been around a long time, and probably isn't all that human anymore. Tough enough to hold their own in a ghost-scrap. But that doesn't mean they're dangerous to the living, necessarily.

I climb up over the rim of the fountain.

"Boing! Boing!" my sister says. "It's right above you now, big sis." I fancy I can feel some kind of rhythmic beat in the air and stone, but to be honest I'm probably imagining it. I climb up onto the fountain, and find the wide, dark water spout.

Once, this would have carried a thick torrent of water to cascade down over the waterfall - no doubt there would be fish swimming below. For a while, it must have been a damp, mossy hole. But now it has completely dried out, and all that remains of the plants that might have lived there is the pitted surface.

I push the flamingo ahead of me, wriggling forward. Despite all the similar narrow holes I've crawled down, I still have flashes of fear of getting stuck down here. But it's not a complicated plumbing system, and soon enough I'm rolling out into an empty water tank. The rusted remains of the ladder run up one wall. I know there

"Is your giiiiirlfriend down here?" my sister says, giggling. I am wondering the same, with some trepidation. Even up here, there are dangers in the tunnels. If she's not here...

There is a muffled curse in one of pipes leading into the water-tank, and I almost melt with relief. A minute later, Incie's head pops out, and I kneel down to kiss her. She laughs, and uses me to pull herself into the room.

Incandescence. Her mothers were disciples of the Sun, and gave her a suitably religious name. Also very useful for amusing her with pickup lines. I wish I had a proper light, so I could see her beautiful golden-brown skin light up like her namesake. Still we embrace in the dark water-tank, and enjoy a long sloppy kiss while my sister groans.

"You said your goodbyes?" Incie says, looking me in the eye. "There's no turning back after this."

I nod. "You know there's nobody left for me up there. If you're ready, then I am."

"Together." she says, and kisses me again. "All right, wake up your grandmother, will you? We'll need three ghosts for this."

Incie only has one ghost: another girlfriend, whose ghost was pledged to the Holding for the next century. Incie had broken law and doctrine to snatch her girlfriend's ghost from the funeral and bind her illegally into a hand-mirror, and she's been a fugitive ever since. Mostly hiding in my house.

As a ghost whose funeral had not been completed, Incie's girlfriend still has a name, but we don't use it in public to avoid blowing her cover. I feel Incie's thrill as she intones it.

"Cindie, come out." she says, holding up the mirror.

"Oh hey, Incie love." Cinder says, looking around. She yawns. "And Sunnie's here too!"

Oh yes, my name. I got called Sun. Apparently my mothers weren't big on subtlety.

"Do you remember why we're down here, Cindie?" Incie says. Only Incie can call Cinder 'Cindie'.

Cinder hesitates. "Oh!" she says. "We're down somewhere? So it's time?" Her binding is imperfect, and her perception of the living world is limited. Incie still beats herself up over it.

"It's time." I say.

"Wow." Cindie says. "Well, I'm ready."

I pull the vinegar bottle out of my pocket, and whisper to it. "Hey, Nanna?"

Nanna pats me on the shoulder.

Only a very strong ghost can touch the living. There are a few ways to do this. The easiest is to die at a very old age, with many years of soaking in the Sunlight. But for ghosts who don't have that luxury, it suffices to eat other ghosts - or better yet, living people. It is quite unrelated to the size of a ghost, which has much more to do with how long they are dead.

"Need your old Nanna again, Sunnie? I hope it's for a big old Nanna hug!" she says, picking me up off my feet as if I weigh nothing.

I've asked my sister to tell me what Nanna looks like to ghosts and those with the ghost-sight. "Pretty scary!" is all she'll ever tell me. Perhaps that's for the best. Nanna died long before I was born, and to be frank, I rather strongly doubt she's my grandmother. I never felt entirely comfortable asking her which way she got her strength, but if it is from old age - well, perhaps the Sun really was brighter, back in the old days.

Nanna lowers me to the ground, gently, and I take Incie's hand.

"So what do you two fine young ladies need from an old badger like me?" Nanna says. I've never been quite able to determine what a badger is - some animal not yet extinct when Nanna was alive.

"A finding spell." I say. "We need to go down. A long way down."

"Aaaaah... you want to follow your mother." I feel like Nanna must be nodding, knowingly, for all that I can't see her.

"I want to finish what she started." I say. "If we find her, that's a bonus."

"You're her daughter, all right." Nanna says. "Such fire! But it's a very long way down to the bottom, you know. A long way for two nice young ladies and three nice young ghosts." She pauses. "Well. Three nice ghosts!"

"Oh! I calculated." Incie says. "The City's about six hundred years old. I watched the Work crews, and I think they build a new layer every ten years. So it's just sixty layers or so down to the bottom!"

"Every ten years is it now? My, they have gotten slow." Nanna says. "But I'm afraid your calculation is a little bit off, dear. The City's much older than six hundred years. How old, I can't tell you. And back in its heyday, well, they would be popping up a layer every year!"

"Wow, Nanna!" my sister says. "Were you there?"

"Oh no." Nanna says. "But my Nanna's Nanna? She was there. I'm sure she's still floating around down there, somewhere. Why, she must be as big as a palace! Perhaps we'll meet her on the way down."

"You still think we can do it, Nanna?" I say.

"Oh yes. We'll just have to be a bit clever about it." Nanna cackles. "For a start, we'll have to make some friends, and we'll have to build an Engine."

"What for?" Cinder says. "I know a thing or two about Engines."

"Well, that will be very useful, dear, but we will need some very clever ghosts to build this Engine."

"For..?" Incie says, hesitantly.

"Well, for a project like you young ladies have in mind? I think we shall have to restart a Sun."


	2. Chapter 2

"Nanna, I trust you in all things of course, but what in the sky are you talking about?"

It's all I can think to say.

"Yeah!" says Incie. "There's only one Sun, right?"

Nanna chuckles. "Suns don't live forever, dear." she says. "When a Sun gets old like me, well, it starts to sink. Nothing stays in the sky forever."

"The Sun can die?" Cinder says.

"Oh, it's quite inevitable." Nanna says this rather more affably than I feel is entirely appropriate. "The last sun died... well you told me yourself: six hundred years ago."

Six hundred years ago: the start of the Calendar. When the City was first built, before the weight of our sins started to drag it down into the clouds below. Well, so went the story of Creation. One version of it, anyway.

"This does sound pretty far-fetched, Nanna." I say. "But I guess we'll soon get to see for ourselves..."

"Indeed you will. The Sun's bones -"

"Suns have bones!?" my sister says.

"Suns have lots of bones. And we'll find them. But first, we need to make a few preparations. Now, let's see about getting out of this hole."

"Can't you just knock it open, Nanna?" I say. Surely the walls aren't that thick?

"Not if you want me awake again before the end of this little excursion, Sunnie. These walls have not known the light of a Sun in far too long. But perhaps your sweetheart can do something about that?"

I glance at Incie. She looks as baffled as I am.

"Oh dear me, girl." Nanna says. "Didn't your mothers teach you anything?"

"Just a bunch of religious songs and prayers and such. Which are, apparently, absolutely definitely false."

"Oh, not at all! The Sun's followers might not let everything on, but they're not dishonest, dear. They have a very important duty. Why don't you sing one of those songs?"

"Uh, are you sure that's a good idea?" I say. "I mean, making a lot of noise down here..."

"I don't see any ghosts!" my sister says. Which isn't necessarily a good thing. Ghosts aren't the most scary thing.

"Sunnie dear, do stop worrying." Nanna says. "Incandescence, if you would?"

Falteringly, Incie steps into the centre of the chamber and starts singing. The Sun's hymns are in an old language, from an earlier era of the City, now almost never used outside of religious ceremonies and obscure laws. My mothers were - despite my name - not Disciples of the Sun. I'm not entirely sure what they were, really.

As Incie finds her voice, the echoes fold in around us. It's not exactly harmonious, but I get tingles all over my body all the same. She reaches the end of the song, and the echoes slowly fade. Nothing seems to be different. (Well, nothing except the amount I want to kiss her again.)

"Wow, Incie!" my sister says, before I can do so. "You've lit up the walls!"

"I have?" Incie says, looking at me. I shrug.

"It's incredible!" Cinder says. "I can see it clearly. Just like it's Sun-lit."

Incie hesitates. "My parents said we spread the light of the Sun in Her holy words. I kind of assumed that was just a metaphor."

"And at last, she remembers." Nanna says. I see Incie's hair flatten where Nanna pats her head. "But before you get carried away, dear, remember the words aren't so important as a singer who's known the touch of a Sun, and a suitable tune. You could be singing nursery rhymes. But I thought you'd have the best singing voice."

"Oh." Incie says.

"Now, I'm going to knock down this wall while it's still lit up, and then I shall have to have a nap." Nanna says this very firmly. "You girls will be on your own for a while. Make your way down, any way you can, and if you meet a friendly face, ask her about Green Passion."

"What's that?" Cinder says.

"She is a ghost." Nanna says. "An old friend, no longer bound. But I can't imagine she's left the City. No, if I know Passion, she'll have made quite a name for herself down here. Wake me up when you find her."

With that, the wall of the water tank shatters into thousands of dark stone splinters. They burst out into the room outside, pinging off the rusted remains of ancient plumbing and cascading across the floor. Incie and I duck instinctively, though few chips end up coming back our way. We both start coughing heavily as the room fills with dust.

Nanna is silent.

"Wow!" my sister says. "I want to be able to do that!" I quietly hope she's just forgotten the cost, and hold onto Incie until the dust starts to clear. We're both a little shaken, and I have a small cut on my forearm - nothing too serious, but we tie a spare sock round it anyway, just in case. The ghost-bindings are thankfully not damaged.

Taking a deep breath, I step out of the broken tank and carefully tiptoe out onto the field of debris, hoping I don't twist my ankle. Incie holds my hand as we wobble across onto firmer ground.

The door to this room was wooden, but it's rotted away and collapses into dust and splinters as I touch it. We find ourselves in an alleyway turned maintenance tunnel, now packed with structural supports for the streets and buildings above. Ahead is a cave-in, and the barely recognisable remains of some work overalls - of course, whoever was wearing them would have been long since eaten by ghosts.

"Any ghosts come to investigate the noise?" I ask.

"Not a one!" my sister says, sounding nervous. I have to say I agree. I'm glad for the warmth of Incie's hand in mine.

Our small red lamps don't illuminate much. Shadows leap around us as we make our way down the tunnel away from the cave-in, looking for some helpfully informative sign or stairwell to lead us down to the next level. After a while come across the remains of a market, seemingly underground even when it was living - no doubt exchanging all sorts of terrible proscribed goods before the clouds rose up above it somewhere far outside.

I dig into my bag and pull out the first of my carefully packed meals. For now, something tasty and green and spicy, flush with Sunlight - I'm not greatly looking forward to the later ones, dried and salted and preserved to survive the trip. Incie has a similar bag, but only nibbles on hers when I prompt her. "Got to make it last..." she tells me. I worry.

We poke around the old market, hoping for some evidence of a way down. It is Cinder, in fact, who first notices the approaching people. They carry no lights. It is difficult to count them in the gloom.

At first I don't believe my eyes - an illusion, surely, produced by some ghost or monster. But my sister and Cinder agree: they are not ghosts. They are untouched by the Sun, but as flesh and blood as us.

There is little point in hiding - our lamps would have been seen from the far end of the corridor. So we stand together as the people walk to the market.

As they get closer we see they are dressed extravagently, in fabrics far richer than I could ever imagine affording, black silk that flows like the clouds outside. And each of them wears a blindfold.

There turn out to be five of them. And when they reach the market, we realise they are each improbably tall, twice as high as a grown woman. They pay us no attention, but continue walking down one of the many tunnels leading away from the market. None of them make a sound but for the clicking of sharp shoes on stone.

Well, we follow, of course. They must be going somewhere. It's a better lead than wandering the tunnels until we die of starvation.

Our new friends are hard to keep pace with, but we do our best to hurry along at their heels. The buildings around us are a strange mix of cellars, ground floors and occasionally roofs poking through from below, webbed throughout with the foundations of the oppressively close ceiling. Sometimes, the ceiling rises as we enter a building, but mostly it stays level, just above the heads of our guides. We take in the sights around us: here, a dead garden, flowerbeds now sprouting thick stone pillars with no regard for the garden's aesthetics; there, a damp public square thronged with a crowd of softly glowing mushrooms. Frustratingly, there are no convenient upper floors with stairs that might lead us further down - it's as if the builders hoped to seal off the levels below entirely. Perhaps they did.

Finally, the five tall strangers stop walking. We are standing on the tiled roof of an old Sun-church. It must have been magnificent in its day.

The leader takes off her blindfold. The others follow suit. The leader hitches up her skirt, and carefully jumps down from what turn out to be a pair of long stilts. She sees us standing awkwardly nearby.

"Who the fuck?" says one of the others, still on her stilts.

"Well, well." says the leader. "Looks like we've picked up a couple of Sunkissed."

"Delicious."


	3. Chapter 3

I really had you going for a second there, didn't I?

The five strangers fall about laughing. The leader, at least, doesn't laugh too long.

"The looks on your faces!" says one, alighting from her stilts.

"Don't worry. We're not here to eat you." says the one who made the joke.

"But honestly." the leader says. "You're pretty far from home, Sunkissed. What are you doing down here?"

"I could ask you the same question!" Incie says. "What's with the stilts and blindfolds and dresses?"

"All right." the leader says. "That's a fair question."

"Isn't it obvious?" offers one of the others.

"Not to a Sunkissed." the leader says. "You two must get plenty of Sunlight. Down here, we have to be careful not to let our Sunlight leak away. It leaks out of the eyes most of all."

I process this for a moment. "Why don't the ghosts eat you?"

"Nosy little girl, aren't you?" the leader says. "Again, what's your business down here?"

"We're passing through." I say. "Going down. You wouldn't happen to know the way to the next level?"

"That's not much of an answer. Why would you ever want to go down there?" the leader says.

I hesitate, glance at Incie. I don't want to advertise our purpose too much.

"We're looking for her mother!" Incie says suddenly. I squeeze her hand gratefully.

The leader raises an eyebrow. "Your mother? That just raises more questions..."

"She knew a ghost called Green Passion." Cinder's voice rises from Incie's belt. The strangers don't seem bothered, despite their seeming absence of ghosts.

"Oh, did she now?" The leader tilts her head. One of the others mutters "What are we getting ourselves into?"

The leader sighs heavily. "Well, this was supposed to be a simple trip. Get dressed up, go to the church, soak in some Sunlight, bring a few Sun-drenched stones back for the family. I'm not sure I want to know what you're up to anymore. None of us want to get mixed up in Green Passion's business."

"You're here to get Sunlight?" Incie grins. "If I give you a lot of Sunlight, will you show us the way to the next level?" she says.

The leader raises an eyebrow. "And how would you give us all this Sunlight?"

Incie squeezes my hand, and stands up straight. She starts singing, her voice booming in the wide chamber. There are gasps from the stilt-walkers; the leader finally smiles.

"OK, well! Don't go splashing that about everywhere." she says. "I think we can do business."

In the end we come to an arrangement with bags; Incie sings, the stilt-walkers take their Sunlight, and they knock a small hole in the wall of one of the Sun-church towers to allow us to go down to the next level.

As they work to remove the stones, the stilt-walkers chat with me about the politics of ghosts down here: Green Passion turns out to run a particularly vicious gang of ghosts who have been rapidly expanding their territory by devouring other ghosts. The ghost gangs, explains the leader, grant protection to humans in exchange for a promise of eventual new recruits. Sun-churches are neutral ground: the stones, still touched by the Sun, are broadly inaccessible for the ghosts, and the humans have agreed to share their dwindling supply of Sunlight for the sake of survival. One day, when the Sunkissed have finished building, the whole community will find its way up to the next level.

"Why don't you go up to the top?" my sister says.

The leader's face twists. "We each have our reasons." is all she'll say.

Well, we part ways amicably enough, and wind our way down the steps of the tower to the ground floor of the church. It's much like the Sun-churches at the top of the city: a grand circle with a circular stage at the centre, full of shiny brass and white stone. Well, in this case, tarnished brass and mossy stone. The air feels thick and humid, nothing like the dryness of the level above.

"So I guess these walls are all shiny too, huh, sis?" I say to the flamingo.

"Yeah!" my sister says. "But not that shiny."

I turn to Incie. "You want to poke around in here, see how things changed in, uh, you know, church architecture?" Incie laughs and heads for the door. Like everything else in a Sun-church, it's circular. It pivots on a central column.

Outside is... water. The red light of our lamps glistens off of puddles and ponds and streams, all surrounded by mushrooms of various sizes, all across the floor and up the omnipresent support pillars. Some of them are glowing. Some of them are moving.

"Are mushrooms supposed to..." Incie says, moving closer to me. I hold her.

"Hey, sis? There's a lot of ghosties coming..." my sister whispers. "They don't look friendly..."

"Do you think we can outrun them?" I whisper back.

"Yeah, they're pretty slow. They look like big ghost mushrooms... with loads of teeth."

A general rule of thumb: the more teeth a ghost has, the further away you want to be.

"Which way do we go?" Incie says. I point the flamingo round until my sister says "Go!" and we set off, not quite able to run on the slippery flor. At one point, I fall, and Incie catches me before I land in a patch of mushrooms. The mushrooms ripple away, and then surge back, climbing up on top of each other to try and reach me. We back away onto dry land, and the mushrooms cluster at the edge of their pool, hungrily.

"They're definitely following us now." my sister says. "Oh! Sunnie, one of them just ate another..."

"Can you see a way out?" I say, in between deep breaths. The grounds of the church seem to have been a wide-open space, now packed with irregular pillars.

"There! A light!" Cinder says suddenly. I look, but can't see anything. A glance at Incie confirms she can't either.

"A ghost?" I say, glancing at Cinder's mirror and holding up the flamingo for my sister to look too.

"I see it!" my sister says. "Well, them. Lots of ghostie lady with flames for heads!"

Incie looks at me fretfully. "Is that better or worse than hungry mushrooms?"

"I think we should take our chances." Cinder says. "If you could see these mushrooms, you'd agree."

I shrug. "I guess we don't have a choice. Come on..."

We weave our way between the mushroom pools, jumping here and there, trusting the mushrooms aren't quick enough to snare our feet. I wish again for ghost-sight, but my sister and Cinder lead us clearly enough.

"Will you help us?" Cinder shouts. "Yes! Save us from the mushrooms!"

The next few minutes are chaos. For me and Incie, standing on a small patch of dirt surrounded by hungry mushrooms, all we see and feel is a ripple in the air and a wash of intense heat. The mushroom-pools boil, sending up thick clouds of steam that obscure even our dim red view of the chamber. Boiled mushrooms burst with tiny splats, adding choking spores to the noxious mix. We hold each other, face to face, our arms scalded by steam.

When at last it clears... the chamber is still and dark. Our lanterns have both gone out, and I fumble for my lighter to bring the light back... only to wince as my burned arm brushes on my clothes and drop the lighter in the muck. Incie has better luck, and after a few minutes we once again have light.

It's a mess all right. Bits of mushroom are splattered on every available surface. Everything is drenched, and there's still a haze of steam in the air. But there are no living mushrooms in sight, and I can only assume the ghost mushrooms are in an equally sorry state.

"Thank you... thank you..." Cinder is saying. A silent reply. "They want us to come with them. Just to answer some questions, they say."

After that display? "Yes, of course!" I reply, immediately.

"They also say you should pour cold water on those burns." Cinder adds. I nod, and, wincing, fish in my bag for a waterskin.

It's back to following directions from invisible ghosts, but at least this time I'm reasonably sure nothing nearby wants to eat us. Cinder and my sister strike up conversation with them, though without hearing their side, it is mostly a lot of 'mm' and 'I see'. In any case, I can't really concentrate on it through the pain in my arms.

It takes us several hours to get to our destination. The water is omnipresent, but as we leave the sight of the Sun-church, there is thankfully little alive to be seen. The architecture here already seems subtly different. It looks nothing like the sketches in my mothers' collection of dusty journals dating back over hundreds of years - but then, of course it would not, waterlogged and covered with pillars.

The first sign we're getting close is a whisper of music from one of the side-tunnels. Soon, it resolves to a joyful dance tune that catches my blood and makes me want to skip down the corridor. We emerge from a narrow passage into a wide, bright chamber carved out from the walls of many buildings. In the centre is a roaring bonfire and a small crowd of dancing, living people. As we approach, the dance comes to an end, and they crowd around us at a respectful distance, whispering amongst themselves.

At the centre of the fire is a great glass mirror, cut in the shape of the sun surrounded by dozens of rays. Even I can tell it's a beautiful work, and apparently it is unhurt by the bonfire around it. The crowd has left a path for us to approach.

"That's one huge ghost up there..." my sister whispers.

"I can't deny it, I'm pretty big!" says the mirror. "All right, let's do the formalities. Welcome to my hearth, Sun, Incandescence and Cinder. What wonderful names you have!"

"What about me?" my sister says, sounding peeved.

"I'm getting to you. You have to do these things properly." the mirror says, with a sigh. "I welcome also two fine and honest guests whose names have been stolen, and wish them the best in finding their names again."

"Thank you for your welcome." I hazard, trying to get the tone right. "Might we know your name also, gracious host?"

"Ooh, 'gracious host', I like that." The mirror laughs. "Thanks for getting into the spirit of things. You can call me Fire! Now, come on, someone get this girl some burn cream, that looks awful. When you're rested up, we'll have a talk."

We settle down among the little congregation. My sister says there are many times more ghosts than living people, each of them with a flame in place of her head. She describes Fire herself as a giant woman in a dress made of flames, and hair also made of flames, sitting cross-legged in the centre of the fire with the mirror sitting at her heart.

"If nothing else," Cinder adds, "I admire their commitment to a consistent aesthetic."

Soon, someone comes round with a plate of fried mushrooms. After our experiences earlier, mushrooms don't strike me as particularly appealing. Nevertheless, the delicious, spicy smell overcomes me, and I end up eating several platefuls.

Then, another dance: Incie and I whirl around, swap to dance with other partners, and come back together. We both have the idea of coming into kiss the other at the last night of the song and end up banging our heads together and falling about in fits of giggles.

It's unquestionably the best evening I've had since my mother went below.

"You're fine dancers, Sun and Incandescence, and it does me good to see you so happy." says Fire. "If you wanted to stay here, I would be quite delighted. But that's not why you're down here, is it?"

"We're looking for my mother." I say, hoping the same lie would work twice.

"Nice try, but no you aren't." Fire says. "That you have a grander purpose is as clear as your names. And I need you to tell me what it is."

"You've been very kind to us, Fire." I say. "I can tell you that we have to go to the very bottom of the City. But the true reason why we have to do that... my mother said I must only tell someone I trust and love with all four chambers of my heart. I want to honour those words."

"And so you spoke your purpose to Incandescence, and she to Cinder. And there it will end until one of you finds another lover or a child." The fire - or perhaps, Fire - flickers. "Well, I thought you were probably going all the way down. You are not the first to try - perhaps one who came before was your mother. I have no memory for faces!"

"Would you remember her name?" The words are out before Fire finishes speaking.

"If it has not been stolen, yes."

"Her name is Sky."

"Then yes. Hmm. I can see the resemblance actually, yes."

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"She stayed with me a while. We became quite close. And she told me what she hoped to achieve at the bottom of the City. I gave her my blessing, and helped her on her way. And I suppose it's obvious she can't have succeeded. But if she's alive... she's kept her name, if nothing else."

I nod. I can feel tears at the corner of my eyes. No. I have to continue. But then Incie wraps me in her arms, and I can't help but start crying. She holds me as the fire slowly burns. The followers of Fire pass us with more firewood (who knows where they find it?). I don't know how long we sit there.

Eventually I'm calm enough to ask. "My Nanna told me we would have to re-light a Sun to reach the bottom. She said someone called Green Passion could help us. Can you tell us how to find her?"

"Your Nanna is right." Fire says. "And as for Green Passion... our actions in the mushroom field will have looked like an act of war. I should think she's on her way up here right now, to demand an apology. Tribute. What-have-you." She says this so calmly that for a second I think I must have misheard her.

"Are you going to fight her?" Cinder asks. I guess I didn't mishear her after all.

"I don't expect so." Fire actually yawns. "She's a nuisance, but she knows she's not a threat. If you're willing to be offered as 'tribute', I'm sure she'll be happy to accept."


End file.
